A man in a suit walking down a street.
Pictured: Deputy Paul Montague is the President of Education, Sport & Culture. Credit: Paul Chambers.

“Extremely high rates” of school absenteeism require the whole community to come together to solve the problem, the new Education President has said. 

Deputy Paul Montague said the issue was “an absolute drain on educational progress” during his first question and answer session in the States since becoming the President of Education, Sport & Culture.

He noted the rise in the number of students not attending school was having a “significant impact on individuals”, but also on classmates and teachers’ workloads.

Statistics released earlier this year showed school attendance for primary schools stood at 94% and 86% at secondaries – below pre-covid levels.

Deputy Montague, a former teacher, said lack of attendance in such numbers “cannot continue” and announced that more resources are being sought to tackle it. 

He added that the States must “carefully analyse” the root causes to determine if it’s truly linked to “an epidemic of anxiety-linked lack of attendance” or other factors.

The previous Education committee highlighted that disruption to students from reforms to the secondary system might have contributed to lack of attendance.

Pictured: Local secondary school attendance records have been lower than England in recent years.

Health President, Deputy George Oswald, said the high levels of truancy are also affecting Health & Social Care’s workload – especially child protection and the Mutli-Agency Support Hub. 

Deputy Montague said every department of the States and the community must engage with the issue and work together to make headway.

New school governance boards would also work with each school and set attendance targets which must be met.

Deputy Montague also updated the Assembly on school performance, saying standards are improving and in some cases exceeding England.

But he said there was a “very disappointing” fall in English attainment in this year’s GCSE results, with problems extending into primary schools with students’ writing not as strong as their reading.

Positive work to improve maths skills was noted with Year 9’s scoring higher than they had when they first entered secondary education.

Deputy Montague said Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education, had been reappointed for another four years to carry out independent inspections across States schools.